All We Are
by blueflie
Summary: He could never seem to grasp the right words to tell her, but she didn't mind. He was always more of the silent type anyway. Ichigo X Orihime
1. pieces

**Title: **All We Are

**Prompt:** flight

**Pairing**: Ichigo x Orihime

**Disclaimer:** You wish I owned Bleach. There would be so much more beautiful nekkids.

**Warning:** Sappy romance is sappy. Ridiculously, horribly, wonderfully sappy, and corny, and cliche, and all this other great stuff that you know you love, but pretend to hate for the sake being cool and saving face.

* * *

He's not as dense as everyone thinks he is. He's always known she felt something for him, maybe he didn't know it was love, but he knew it was something.

He felt like a jerk for sure, pretending he didn't know, but it was better than letting her down and watching that beautiful face cry, and then try act strong and reassure him that it's fine, she fine, everything's fine and she's not crying, but crying all the same.

He was pathetic, really.

He told himself that it was Rukia, he loved _Rukia_, not this beautiful smiling girl who had freely give her heart to him and never thought once that she deserved more than him, more than someone who couldn't protect her, couldn't ever be enough for her.

And he had to feel her snatched away from him, feel her in his arms once more, snatched away again, watch her almost die for him, and all the tears, before he realized that Rukia made the rain go away, but _she _was the one who kept it away, always smiling, always sunny.

She looked up at him, half mindedly rubbing the bandage on her forearm. The bandage that covered the wound that he couldn't save her from.

He looked back at her, silently willing her to come closer where he could touch her, hold her, rescue her.

"I…-"

"It's okay Kurosaki-kun, you don't have to say anything." She gave him a small smile, and even that was enough to make his heart pound frantically against walls of his chest.

"I know that…you…you didn't have to come here," she continued, "I'm fine, really, I am! I'm healing and I even made some red bean paste the other night and…" Her eyes softened. "I'm…fine. Just fine."

A single tear slid down her cheek. "I just wish…I wish Kurosaki-kun didn't have to get hurt…I wish I you didn't have to come save me…I wish I was stronger, strong like Rukia and Ishida and-"

She looked down.

"-and you."

And his heart broke for her.

_Don't_

_Don't cry_

_Don't be sad_

_I'll make it better, I promise_

"I promise," he whispered. He thought of her, trying to save him, willing to die for him, lying motionless in his arms.

_In his arms._

He clenched his teeth, and stepped closer.

_I'll save you this time._

Closer.

_I'll make your rain go away._

And he was standing right in front of her, willing his soul to escape from his body and breathe into hers, and chase all the sadness away.

Later on, he'd claim that she felt his love seeping out of his body and looked up at him, and she'd laugh and call him a sappy romantic at heart.

"I-I'm sorry…that I couldn't...I couldn't-"

She snapped her head up. "Don't apologize, Kurosaki-kun! It's not your fault! It was never your fault! It was...it was my fault, for being so weak! I was so weak…so…_useless_...I couldn't even protect the people I-"

And their eyes meet.

"…love."

She look down at her feet, then up at him expectantly, as if she were waiting for him to scoff and laugh at her, than leave her alone again with her misery, all alone again.

He opened his mouth to say something, anything, hold her, whisper in her ear and reassure her that he wasn't leaving, not ever, and she would never be alone again.

Tears gathered in her warm grey eyes. "B-but Kurosaki-kun is so strong, and he can protect everyone he cares for! Kurosaki-kun can save the world! And I-I understand that…that I-I'm just…just so… so weak! So…I don't deserve to be saved! A-and I'm not strong or helpful or brave or-or anything! I'm just…just pathetic!"

"Inoue."

He stepped closer, and reached out to touch her face, reach out and pull her out of this dark place.

She was sobbing now, choking back on the tortured sounds fighting to escape from her soul.

"A-and so…such a burden! Everyone else, everyone is so strong, everyone…and I'm so weak-"

"Inoue."

"-and so unworthy-"

"Inoue."

"-and I'm just…just your-"

"_Orihime_."

"-your…Orihime."

She stopped, and looked up at him sharply, brows furrowed, mouth slightly agape at what she had just said.

Right about then, he had expected her to blush furiously and wave her hands around frantically, apologizing profusely, Kurosaki-kun _Kurosaki-kun_, little blue men, aliens, bean paste.

But that was the old Orihime, the one who hadn't been dropped on the floor and shattered into a billion pieces that could never be fully put back together. Instead, she curled into herself, retreating further and further into what little she had left of her own.

"…why…did you come back...?" A whisper, more to herself than anyone else.

But he heard her. And he felt his heart breaking with hers, and he took her into her arms and told himself that he would search the world and find all her missing pieces and glue her back together so she could smile again.

"Because…-"

_Because you make my world spin around_

"-I…"

_And your smile makes me dizzy_

He pulled her closer, unfinished sentence hanging in the air for a moment, then evaporating into the small space between them. Because sometimes words are just too much.

_And I can't tell if I'm falling of flying_

_

* * *

_

**Author's Note: **This is always how I imagined it happening, awkward conversation, but total internal sap. You know you love OOC Ichigo, badass punk with a soft side thinking all these girly romantic things. At least, that's how I like to think of it. Mentally scarred Orihime as not as high on life as she used to be, because think about it: how psyched about existing would you be if a creep with no eyebrows stroked your face?

Also, random stuttering and Kurosaki-kun blue alien thing annoys me, so I'mma stick with severely depressed, OOC Orihime.

Yeah.


	2. heartbeats

Her life is measured in heartbeats.

In a few heartbeats, life took away her brother and replaced him with sorrow and loneliness. In a few heartbeats, promises were made that bonded two young girls forever. And in a single heartbeat, the moment she first saw him, life took back some of the sorrow and replaced that tiny bit with hope.

She likes to think that her heartbeats could change the world.

And now it seems that in a progression of heartbeats, he had moved from across five lifetimes to across a classroom and into her life, into her heart, into her home, and into her arms.

"My Orihime…" he said, pulling her closer, pulling their heartbeats closer, "I like the sound of that."

His arms tightened around her waist, and she clung tighter to his T-shirt. Buried her face into his neck. Breathed. Listened, listened to the sound of her heart falling into place with his.

"This is a dream," she whispered, softly, as if the real, not-a-dream Ichigo would hear her if she wished too loudly that it wasn't.

_Just a dream._

His hands moved up to her face, one cradling the back of her head, the other gently tilting the soft curve of her jawbone up, forcing her to look him in the eyes.

"Stop hiding," he whispered, a small smirk turning up the corners of his mouth. He brushed back a few strands of auburn hair from her face. He moved closer. He ran his thumb across her cheekbone, across her lower lip. He held her tighter, closer. He contemplated. He wiped the stains her tears had left behind. He hoped. He breathed, and listened. Listened to the sound of his heart racing and slowing down in a desperate attempt to fall in to place with hers.

And in the span of a single skipped beat, he moved from across five lifetimes to across a classroom, into her life, into her heart, into her home, into her arms, and onto her lips, into her soul, part of her eternity, part of her heartbeat.

These heartbeats changed her life, the ones where hands moved to cling desperately to the neck of an orange-haired boy with eyes like stars, where arms pulled tighter, tongues collided, hearts fluttered, and two lives pulled away to breathe, then joined together, and never left each other again.

* * *

**Author's Note:** Written to Never Say Never by The Fray. Good song, slightly needy if you think about it, but great for plotless self-indulgent romance. If you couldn't tell, I'm unreasonably scared of complete sentences. But whatever, that's done, now I can move on with my life and tell everyone that at one point, I wrote a really bad fanfiction.

Have a nice life, everyone.


End file.
